I agree with your comments, Scott, but there are further issues to consider as well. The recent example of Senator Chris Ellison taking his family to Broome for 5 holidays in 7 years is one; the huge printing expenses that federal MPs are given every year is another.
As a former state MP, my view is that politicians should be paid much more than at present but with virtually no perks or hidden payments available. All expenditure by MPs should be on the public record and political parties should be forced to publicly show where they spend the money they get from taxpayers via the public funding of election campaigns. More seriously, however, the use of public funds to reimburse political parties is a serious threat to democracy, since it allows MPs and parties to rely less on direct approaches to electors, thereby diminishing the contact between the real world that citizens live in and the artificial world of MPs. All a political party has to do is raid the public piggybank to give themselves more money, not directly as salaries or allowances, but in a more subtle manner via increases in taxpayer funding of election campaigns or other expense refunds.

For starters: If our extremely arrogant PM can have two tax payer funded homes and then can use the RAAF as a taxi service between Canberra & Sydney what chance has any one to stop this legalised stealing by over-paid incompetant pollies?
In my electorate in SE Qld. the sitting member (often referred to 'the minister for asking dorothy dix questions')at election time sends out her 'information?' packs we usually get one or two a year but come election time we get many many more. These could also be seen as the members family photo album as there are so many photos of her "humble" self. Then closer to the election it seems that EVERY newspaper in her area gets a four too eight page spread in every issue at an estimated cost in the tens of thousands. Of course the others running for the seat get nothing at all. I did question Abetz (a name like that he is a senator responsible for election spending) well this most arrogant little chap (nearly said wart) almost told me to mind my own business and then used the liberals favourite excuse "Labour did it when they were in power" All I can say we are lucky that labour did not resort to infanticide or something similar. So another result of this 'legalised?' criminal rort is it makes them even more bloody arrogant to us the voters. Regards, numbat

Public funding increases the cost of campaigns by making it easier to spend money. As the funding is based on votes received, it doesn't level the playing field but merely amplifies existing advantages.

To reduce the cost AND level the playing field, one must stop trying to take the message to the voters, and start bringing the voters to the message.

See the post at http://grputland.blogspot.com/2007/07/democracy-vs-universal-suffrage.html (it's short, but doesn't quite fit within the 350-word limit).

to save time, i'll content myself with the general field theory of political science:

"you get the government you deserve"

Demos, you're correct: we get what we deserve. But the best governments (and there have been a few at both state and federal level - Kawke/Keating and Sir Charles Court in WA in the 1970s) generally have strong oppositions sitting on the cross benches to keep the B*@#$@$'s honest. We still need to get the best possible people into our parliaments or we'll have a repeat of Jo Bjelke-Petersen or Brian Burke or Goff Whitlam or financial disasters as occurred in the 1980s in SA and Victoria. So, sadly, we still need to address issues such as how much we pay our MPs, what their expense allowances should be and so on.

Few are going to argue against Prasser's findings here, but I can't help but feel that at this stage, the bigger threat is still the issue of campaign contributions from private sources.

Until some kind of a communications model is set up wherein both the toll upon the public purse vs the conflicts set forth by private donations is resolved, there are going to be issues of improper influence. This is politics after all...